Paul Van de Water, one of the top budget wonks at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, has a worth-reading post [1]at Off the Charts this morning.

“Medicare and Medicaid spending per beneficiary has grown less rapidly than costs for private health insurance in recent years, as we have previously pointed out. (See here[2] and Figure 1 here[3].)

This favorable trend is projected to continue for at least the coming decade, according to a new article[4] in The New England Journal of Medicine. These data belie the claim that spending for Medicare and Medicaid is “out of control” and that the programs must be fundamentally restructured by adopting Medicare premium support[5] or converting Medicaid into a block grant[6].”